


i'd know where to be

by Trojie



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kneeling, Male Friendship, Non-Linear Narrative, Non-Sexual Kink, Platonic D/s, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-18
Updated: 2018-02-18
Packaged: 2019-03-20 21:10:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13726038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: Pete needs to let go. Andy needs to hold on.





	i'd know where to be

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to uglowian for cheerleading this thing out of a vague idea into this ... whatever it is <333
> 
> Disclaimer: none of this happened, none of this is real, everyone relax. And yes, the title is from _Church_.

Late afternoon sunlight slants in through the tinted windows of the bus.

It's like sitting in a church. A real one, not the neon violet romanesque fever dream they're currently living in. A space for contemplation, made out of the things they bring with them to pass the time, and privacy, and silence.

Pete drops his forehead to Andy's knee and, for what might be the first time in this entire press junket, just ... breathes. 

No charades, no fidget spinners, no fucking bathbombs or llamas or trying to find alternate lyrics that scan to tracks full of swearwords you can't say on Good Morning America because Patrick finally gave in and let his potty mouth ride on this record. No. Not here. Not in this space. Here it's just Andy being quiet, and Pete, kneeling in sunshine and trying to find his inner peace.

His hair flops forwards, silky where it brushes the stained-glass of Andy's inner thigh. His mouth is soft, even with his teeth caught in his lip.

He's so beautiful. Not enough people tell him that. They tell him he's hot, or sexy - or they tell him he tries too hard to be either of those things - but no-one ever seems to just tell him that he's ... lovely, in a way that isn't contingent on anyone's desire or animosity. He always acts like he needs someone else's perspective to collapse the waveform of his existence for him, and Andy hates that people do that to him - look at him, reify him into what they want him to be - without even really seeing him.

You can be beautiful without being something someone wants to fuck. Inside, where it counts, and God. Andy thinks Pete is so beautiful.

Andy smooths his hand down the back of Pete's neck, under his collar, and touches his necklace of thorns and observes the way the skin ripples in the wake of his fingers, like a stone skipping across a pond. He can't get to the inside of Pete, but he knows what it looks like, and after years of this being a thing they do, he knows the right way to send messages. He flattens his palm to the nape of Pete's neck, holds him down. Holds him steady. 

Holds tight, like he, Andy, might fall if he lets go.

'I've got you,' he murmurs, and Pete's bitten lip unhooks, just for a second, and then Andy can finally breathe as well.

***

They're due onstage, and Pete's a mess of red and black in stripes and bruises, clothes and skin to match his hair. None of the rest of them will follow his halfassed directives about band style, so maybe it's as well that he colour coordinates himself like this.

Except Andy looks at the ripped skin at the corner of Pete's puffier than usual mouth, and takes that back. 

'Are you okay?' he asks gently, reaching for Pete's cheek and the bruise blossoming high up over the arch of it. 'You're crying.'

'Fuck off, Hurley,' Pete says, rubbing his eyes even harder and making everything worse. He's already snarled Joe and Patrick into finding excuses to leave, and he's trying to do the same to Andy, it's blatant. 'I'm not crying, my eyes are watering. Fuck you.'

So Andy doesn't ask what the fuck, or whose ass he needs to kick. He will find out which asshole on this stupid pisspoor excuse for a tour took it into his head to take his issues out on Pete, depend on it - but now isn't the time. He can hear the crowd through the wall. Pete needs something else from him right now, and Andy knows what it is, or at least, something he can do to provide it.

Andy catches Pete's wrists, stops him smearing smudges and blood across his stupid face. 'Give me your goddamn eyeliner pencil,' he says firmly, and Pete yanks against him ineffectually for a minute and then jerks his head at the mess of his stage shit, spilled all over the trestle table that's the only flat surface here, in this tiny closet acting the part of a dressing room. 

There's a pick-up-sticks tangle of eyeliner on there. Andy lets go of one of Pete's arms and picks up a pencil that looks not viciously sharp but not uselessly blunt, and offers a little prayer up to whatever watches over pop punk bands that he doesn't fuck this up and blind Pete in the process. 

'If you're gonna be stupid about this,' he says, letting go of Pete's other arm and reaching for his face, 'make up your mind and do it now, not in ten seconds time when I've got a sharp stick under your eyeball.'

Most of the original thick black line Pete drew on there (probably yesterday) is smeared away into a charcoaly, trash-raccoon ruin. Andy's aware there's probably a way to clean it off and start again properly but they don't have time, and Pete's never been one for the whole 'eyeliner sharp enough to kill a man' thing anyway. This'll do. This'll have to do.

Andy has no idea what he's doing but his hands, at least, are still steady, not letting him down. He can do this. He needs to do this. He touches the pencil to the waterline of Pete's eye, and Pete shudders into a soft breath. 'You don't have to do this,' he mumbles, a rising wetness in his eyes when he looks at the ceiling. 

'Fuck you,' says Andy, because it's him and Pete and the normalcy of casual verbal abuse carries a lot more meaning than _oh it's fine, I want to_ or whatever. They've known each other a long time. They know how to send messages.

God knows Andy understands making your appearance into your armour, but he does it to himself slowly, painfully, in ways that bleed and heal so that he can't remove it later - Pete has to remake his armour every day, and sometimes … sometimes it washes away too easy, and putting it back on is just too much. But Andy isn't going to let Pete go out in public vulnerable when he can help him at least _look_ bulletproof. 

'You better not mess up my face,' says Pete. 

'Shut up, and stay still,' says Andy, slipping his left hand round to hold Pete by the scruff of his neck, and Pete's smile finally trembles its way back to life.

***

The curtains in this shitbox motel room are thin, and blue, and they light the room like an old porno or the cover of a jazz album, in midnight velvet colours: navy and cobalt, shot through with aquamarine.

Two single beds isn't enough space for four guys, even if three of them are tiny. Joe has always liked to give Patrick shit about being pocket-sized, but now that they're finally touring he doesn't bitch about having to share with him. Much, anyway. 

Whatever. It's four twenty something in the morning, and Andy's sharing with Pete, and Pete can't stay still.

He's trying, it's plain, it's just he's vibrating like a strike on a cymbal, and it's simple physics, he's a body in motion that has yet to come to rest. He's been up for days, but they've been driving for most of it. Pete just took more shifts than he should have, instead of even trying to nap, and Andy's not happy about that, but neither of the other two is confident enough for long stints at the wheel yet. They're just kids, they're just fucking kids and it's up to Pete and Andy to make sure everyone lives through this. So Andy didn't say anything, because up Pete is better for longhaul driving than down Pete, maybe, just maybe. 

Pete's doctor might beg to differ, but Pete isn't exactly seeing his doctor regularly right now, and for all he always swears he tries to take his pills at the right intervals, he's not managing it. 

Not touching, but too close in this bed for Andy not to feel it, Pete jangles, and Andy grits his teeth. They have to at least fucking sleep if they're gonna keep on the way they are. 

Andy reaches out and flattens one hand in the dip of Pete's bare waist. An arrest, like Pete's an errant ride that got caught by an off-target stick. He's only hoping to still him, but Pete noises in the back of his throat and curls suddenly into Andy's space, in a knot, like a dying octopus. The pair of them together are sketches made of sweat and skin and ink and hair, and it's objectively gross, but something in Andy that's been a rictus for days finally unclenches. He slides his hand up and presses on the back of Pete's neck, until Pete's wet breath is huffing against his throat. 

_It's okay, stay_ is all Andy meant for that to say, but Pete softens into it, curves to Andy's toastrack body, and so Andy just. Leaves his hand there, hoping that, maybe, that little bit of pressure will keep Pete in this good place somehow. 

It does, or at least, Pete evens out into an unconsciousness that isn't full of clonic jerks and nightmare noises, and Andy, listening to Joe's deep snore and Patrick's odd, intermittent sleep talking from the other bed, eventually, fucking finally, follows suit.

***

Andy nopes out of the session as soon as he can, as soon as Patrick stops nitpicking his fills and tells him the last take will work, or at least, that he can work with it. _Oh, great,_ Andy wants to say. _I'm so glad you can work with me. We're only in the same goddamn band,_ but he doesn't say it out loud, because the last thing they need is one more argument. 

He stomps back to the apartment he's been renting near the studio, on foot, because he's got energy he can't get out in four-four time. The walk doesn't cure it, but it stops him wanting to throw things by the time he makes it back, at least.

Two hours later, it's late evening, and Pete doesn't even quite make it through the door after Andy opens it to his arrhythmic knocking. He just half-collapses over the threshold, at Andy's feet. 

'Are you drunk?' Andy asks, even though he knows the answer. 

Pete shakes his head against the bones of Andy's feet, cheekbone to metatarsals, little cartilage-shifting feelings that squirm like Andy's heart. Andy can smell booze and sugar, and he doesn't need the evidence to know Pete's not telling the truth - he can see it just in the set of Pete's shoulders, and that hurts. It isn't like Andy cares. He doesn't make them keep it away from him, he's always social when they're having a couple of quiet ones on the bus on tour. Pete doesn't have to fucking hide shit.

'Don't lie to me,' he says, a little snappish, still mad at Patrick and the uncooperative beat and this stupid apartment and this stupid town and this stupid _album_ \-- and Pete shudders. 

'I'll go,' he says, muffled in Andy's skin. 'I'm sorry, I just. I wasn't thinking.'

Andy's heart clenches.

Pete's too drunk to be allowed out, that's for fucking sure. It's rising off his skin, sweet and sickly. Like fuck Andy's going to let him go off into the dark, spinning on all of his axes. Like _fuck_. For just a tiny split of a moment, Andy can see the two different ways he could take his refusal of the concept of Pete leaving, both parallel in his mind. He could pick him up, or. 

He pulls away, leaves Pete to sprawl on the floor, and goes to sit on the sofa. He takes a breath, tries to find his centre. 

'Come here,' he says, and it doesn't surprise him when Pete crawls on all fours, instead of walking, and puts his head on Andy's knee instead of sitting next to him. Yeah. Okay. Andy knows what this is, or he thinks he does.

It's … a thing he recognises. A paradigm he's seen, in snatches and patches from having a certain subset of friends in the scene, and from the kind of videos every curious teenage boy has to hide from his mom at least once. It's not really his taste, but you don't have to be into it to know what it is. 

It's been niggling Andy for a couple of years. This thing, where Pete butts up against him and waits to be held still. It's gone on too long for Andy to be able to deny that there's something going on there, and he needs to put some kind of name on it just to fucking pin it down long enough to really look at it. 

It makes such an inevitable kind of sense. Pete's easy to read, easy to translate, and it's very easy to see why he might want to lay down everything, including his head, for an hour and have someone else be in charge and stop him from doing something … doing everything he usually ends up fucking doing. 

Shitty fucking luck for both of them that he only got himself here _after_ having fucking done something. 

'Are you listening to me?' Andy asks, quiet but not soft, and Pete nods against his bare kneecap, shuffles himself in until his head is properly on Andy's lap, across what little breadth there is to his thigh. 'Are you?'

'Uh-huh,' Pete says. Soft and sweet and slurred, like the tender insides of him are all broken open. Andy knew he wasn't doing well with these sessions - none of them are - but he didn't realise it was this bad, this raw. 

'I know tracking isn't going great right now, Pete, but - you can't just. Don't do this again.'

Pete rolls his head til his face is buried. His nose digs into Andy's muscle. 'Needed,' he says, or at least that's what Andy thinks he says, it's hard to hear.

Andy slips his hand up to grip the back of Pete's neck. 'If you need to get away from it, I can do that,' he says. 'You know that, man. You only ever have to ask.'

Or, historically, all he has to do is look at Andy the right way in bad light - ask by pleading, puppy-eyed. It's not like he's ever said, _please Andy, make me be still for five fucking minutes_ out loud, but again. Pete's not hard to read.

Pete arches his neck into the hold Andy has on the short, fuzzed hair there, and says nothing. 

'Next time,' Andy says, and presses down a little, til Pete stops moving. 'You come and tell me. You don't bury it in a bottle, alright? You come to _me._ '

Andy watches as some kind of trembling acceptance washes over Pete's face, and if he's really looking at this, if he's putting labels on it, he has to put himself in the corresponding box too. He can't deny, he's as eager to hold tight as Pete is to let go.

***

'One of your crazy kids is on the barrier,' Scott says to Andy quietly (well, quietly for on stage in a small club) in a pause between songs, when he comes over to hand him a bottle of water. Andy assumes he means a fan til he sees the face peeking over the edge of stage left, in the concussion zone under the bank of speaker cabs hanging from the ceiling. This isn't a big venue and it doesn't have high beams, but fortunately this particular crazy kid isn't much taller than Andy himself, so he fits down there just fine.

'Oh crap,' Andy says softly, and Scott, who's been through his own band shit, shrugs. 

Sometimes you don't know you're in free-fall til either the parachute opens, or you hit the ground. Something hammers hard in Andy's chest.

He hasn't seen Pete in … maybe a year.

Andy's seen divorce headlines, seen magazine splash pages, seen pictures of Pete looking like a wreck with a Saporta-shaped shadow behind him like a crutch. Seen a lot of things, none of them that good. But he hasn't seen _Pete_.

Somewhere along the line it got hard to talk to each other, and it feels like there's no way to talk about it without making it sound like some kind of nod towards the reunion the label wants and none of them is ready for. So Andy never called Pete, and Pete never called Andy, and … and. 

And Pete has, presumably, had no-one to touch that knob of bone at the base of his neck, and force him to breathe when the world all gets too big and too loud and too much for him.

And Andy's had no-one to hold onto, and … he came so fucking close to getting swept away. 

Pete's eyes look so deep-dark under that hoodie, the beanie jammed down over his hair, the stage-lights bouncing off him in the wrong direction for how Andy's used to seeing him lit, too far away to see if he's wearing eyeliner or just hasn't slept in days. Keith gets up and announces the next song, after everyone's had a sip of water or at least dumped some over their heads and thrown the rest of the bottle into the pit for the ravenous crowd. 

_Friday Night_ goes pedal to the metal from the first and Andy doesn't lose himself in music the way Joe sometimes seems to - he has too much counting to do to be able to - but for two or so minutes he's intensely inside his own body, he's two legs and two arms, bunched shoulders, tensed thighs, the tight hot strain of his shins from the kick pedal and hi-hat, and an almost physical awareness of the set of Joe's back, the way Joe watches Scott watches Joe, the cues they give off, the click track in his earpiece underneath it all. There's no room in Andy for knowledge of Pete - for knowledge of anything except the living, breathing beat - for two and a half minutes.

But at the end of the song he flicks his head up to get the short, sweaty curl of hair that even the strongest product won't tame out of his eyes, and Pete's there again, moving with the ebb and swell of the crowd as they come down off the outro. 

He's taking a risk being where he is - with his body, because he's not a teenager anymore and these kids fucking move - but also because a Damned Things crowd has enough crazed, determined, confused Fall Out Boy fans that Pete's face isn't one that can go unnoticed. But no-one hassles him, and it's actually Scott who gets to him and invites him backstage afterwards, once they've stowed all their crap away and thrown picks and sticks and setlists at the die-hards in the hopes of making them go the fuck home.

Watching Joe and Pete hug puts a lump in Andy's throat he didn't expect. He has to get a towel and a bottle of water and maybe insofar as there's space to give them a moment, he should give them a moment. 

By the time he's got a clean shirt on and isn't literally dripping with sweat, Keith's passing out beers. Andy smiles at him when a cold orange soda finds its way into his hand, bottle wet with condensation, and gets a damp, sticky pat on the shoulder in return. 

It's nice, being in a band who're old enough and ugly enough that they can drink without Andy always being on edge for puke-and-ambulance alert. Not that Fall Out Boy were always like that, but well. Andy watched Joe and Patrick go from coloured wristbands and Xs on the backs of their hands to hurling their guts into gutters, and watched Pete be … Pete, repeatedly, for years. It was hard to not worry even after they started to outgrow it. 

'You cut your hair,' says Pete. He reaches out over the back of Joe and runs his hand over Andy's head. 'Looking sharp, Hurley. I like it.'

'Where are my pats?' Joe asks with a pouty face, and Pete tangles his hand in Joe's hair like petting a puppy, at least until Scott wants Joe's attention and he scoots off the sofa. Pete slides into his spot, into Andy's side. He clinks his bottle to Andy's.

It's an orange soda. Pete looks so tired, and he leans into Andy like his own body is too heavy to hold up.

'You wanna get out of here?' Andy asks quietly. 'I had a long day, and I bet yours was longer. Were you coming from New York, or -'

'Yeah. I saw you guys were playing and I had a mad five minutes, I guess. They shouldn't leave me alone with my credit card,' Pete jokes, and it doesn't fall flat so much as ring maybe too true. Then he blinks. 'Fuck. I didn't even book a fucking hotel room.'

He doesn't have a bag, either, Andy notices. 

'That's okay, you can come crash with me.'

The venue's shutting down. There's not technically room for an extra person in the cars going back to the hotel, but they squash up. Pete ends up half on Andy's lap and half on Joe's. Everyone stinks, and everyone's kind of talked out, sacked out. Scott's head is nodding before they've gone four blocks, and Joe needs some time to himself desperately - Andy knows the signs. Pete does too, by the way he's leaning, trying to give Joe space in a backseat that has none to spare. 

Joe just tips his head back on the seat-back and closes his eyes. 

Pete looks at Andy, and there's that worry-wrinkle in the centre of his brow. He bumps close to Andy the whole way through the hotel lobby, the elevator, the corridor, the inevitable fumbling for the key card - Pete takes Andy's bag so he can find the damn thing and shove it into the lock, and goes and puts it by the bed where Andy always likes to keep it so he can grab for shit in the middle of the night. The oldest of habits never die at all. 

In the same way, some kind of always-known instinct, Andy pushes Pete into the bathroom, making a face at his cold-sticky moshpit-gross t-shirt. He busies himself sorting his shit out, while the water turns on with a hiss, and Pete clanks around doing whatever the hell it is he always seems to find to do in a bathroom, even though he didn't bring so much as a toothbrush with him. 

Andy fidgets. They're only here for one night, so it's not like he needs to unpack. Eventually he finds the little kettle and makes a mug of tea just to have something to do with his hands, but he doesn't really want it.

When Pete surfaces, in a swirl of hot fog and a smell of generic hotel toiletries and no shirt, but the same grody pair of jeans, Andy abandons the tea and gets up to push him again, this time to the sofa and the TV. 'Entertain yourself,' he says. 'There's probably a remote around somewhere. I'll be right back.'

Pete's smile is an eggshell crack in the tiredness he radiates, but it lets a tiny bit of sunshine out. 'Won't go far,' he says. 'Got stomped pretty hard in the pit, you know what it's like.' Andy rolls his eyes and leaves Pete to channel surf, and ducks into the steamy bathroom, dying to sluice off the sweat and grime and the weird feeling in his ribcage, as if enough hot water could do that, could get to him on the inside.

Heat billows around him as soon as he turns the shower on. Pete didn't even use up all the hot water, although he did discard his shirt in one corner, and Andy fumbles his shower gel out of his washbag and stumbles into the cubicle, calves and thighs already protesting the night's double-kick extravagances. 

He can't hear the TV over the noise of the water, but there's just a textural change to a room you know someone else is occupying with you, a pressure change, maybe. Something atmospheric. Andy runs suds over his skin and doesn't bother washing his hair and feels a little bit scraped-clean, a little bit boiled new, by the time the water starts to cool.

He pushes the bathroom door open and nearly trips over Pete, sprawled on the floor like his spine hurts him. It probably does. His posture is fucking awful, and he was pogoing for two hours and then crammed onto a shitty couch after that. He arches up and subsides a couple of times, flat to the carpet, as Andy settles himself into the differently shitty but definitely newer couch. 

The mug of tea is empty. Andy smiles.

'You okay down there?'

''Mfine' says Pete without opening his eyes. He rolls his shoulders against the carpet. It must be scratchy against his bare skin, but that can feel nice, Andy knows. They're ten minutes into an episode of something involving weird food and shouting before Pete shuffles to his knees, a few feet away, and looks up at Andy, as if he's worried he's interrupting Andy's reality TV binge.

Andy would happily pitch the TV out the window like Keith Moon if it would make Pete realise he's not an interruption, but instead he settles for twitching his fingers at him. 'C'mere,' he says, and it's a relief when Pete's eyes shiver shut and he starts to move. He kneewalks the three steps it takes til he's in range of Andy's hands, and can be pulled down to rest against Andy's thigh.

He breathes against Andy's skin, air fluttering, and the knot of Andy's ribs starts to unlace.

'Been too long,' Andy says, tattooed hands feathering through Pete's damp, slowly enfluffening hair.

'Mm,' says Pete, eyes still closed. His hands are folded in his lap and his spine is liquid now, like he's meditating. Andy's seen people who were doing yoga, tai chi, hell, people who were completely fucking stoned, who didn't look as at peace as Pete can look on his knees. He isn't there yet, but it's falling into place, stones in a pond, and fuck, Andy missed this. 

Of all the things Andy needed changed, of all the things that didn't work in Fall Out Boy, this was never one of them. Maybe Pete's too good at hitting the lowest notes, but Andy, in his soul, he needs a steady beat. There are things Andy needs and when the band went on hiatus he lost them all at once. He fell so fast, landed so hard, and even since Joe came and pulled him up, he's still only been managing to gather up one thing at a time, and in a wrong-headed, cockeyed order. 

Pete-and-Andy were never on hiatus. This isn't the band, isn't business, this is his _life_. He didn't want this to stop. 

'Can't let it go this long again,' he says, and it's not an instruction, it's a plea.

'Nope,' says Pete. The plosive pops against Andy's skin, making him shiver. After the heat of the bathroom, and now that he's only wearing shorts, the air of the room is getting too cold for comfort. Pete can't be much better, and he had to get back into his dirty clothes. 'Not fucking gonna.'

Andy skritches at his scalp, and a hundred shitty motel rooms play through his mind when he says, 'only one bed in here.'

'I can take the couch,' says Pete, not moving. 

That's not what Andy meant. 'No, I just - it's like old times,' he says. 'that's all.'

Pete shifts a little, blinks up at him softly. 'I miss it too,' he says.

There's nothing Andy can say to that, nothing at all, except, 'So come to bed with me.'

It sounds like a line, it _is_ a line, a textbook one, and Pete's already laughing at him, so he adds, 'and take your fucking jeans off, they're disgusting.'

Pete curls against him; soft skin, boxer shorts. Practically naked and entirely guileless, and Andy pulls the covers up over both of them. He settles his hands at Pete's hip and, always, the curve of his neck, and pulls him in.

Next comes sleep - he knows this. Pete comes to him when he can't stop, and when he can't sleep, and maybe it's been a long time but Andy isn't going to let him down by talking and ruining it. 

Except Pete shifts against him. 'I'm sorry,' he says, softly, tracing Andy's ribs with his fingertips. 

'What?'

'I know I - I'm kind of bad at not being selfish,' he says. 'And I had all that shit go down.'

A hundred gossip magazine covers, splashed with pink and yellow fonts, piles of them in barber's shops for Andy to ignore, cartoon rips down the middle of photos of Pete and Ashlee. All that shit, indeed. 

Andy's about to say something, to tell him he's the one who should be sorry, for not finding Pete when he knew things were bad, but Pete touches his mouth, off-centre in the dark like he's trying to shush him with a finger. 'But you had shit go down too,' he says. His voice cracks a little. 'Joe told me.'

'Pete -'

'I should have called,' Pete says. 'Fuck, Andy, I should have - I left you all alone in the fucking wilderness.'

'It wasn't exactly the middle of Yosemite,' Andy points out, a rasp in his throat that he can't seem to iron out.

'Whatever. I know I fucking disappeared on you and that was a dick move, and I'm sorry.'

His eyes are damp against Andy's chest, and he leans in so close, like he can fill in the hollow place there where Andy's come so close to caving in, where he still aches at nights.

Pete's mouth moves against Andy's throat. 'Go to sleep,' he says. 'I've got you.'


End file.
